But when Barry Innes feels the urge to drop a few four-letter words, he had better be careful - he’s on his final warning from the stadium manager, and could be banned if anyone else complains about his language.

Which is an interesting thing.

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Because football matches have traditionally been seen - by the almost exclusively male world they once were - as the one place where shouting the f-word was not only allowed, but actually encouraged by your peers and the social environment.

Nowhere else in British society will you ever see 10,000 people all beginning a low ‘ohhhh’ sound before unleashing a very loud ‘you’re sh** - ahhhhh’ at one man (the goalkeeper) doing a fairly routine part of his professional job (taking a goal kick).

Section 82 at Ashton Gate (Image: Rogan/JMP)

Mr Innes’ season ticket has been relocated to the corner of Ashton Gate known as ‘Section 82’ - a place which has fairly recently become the home for the nearest thing Bristol City have to the continental-style Ultras.

It’s a bit more rowdy there - there’s a drum, a guy with a megaphone and people there stand, sing and swear.

Over in the area Mr Innes sat until Saturday, swearing - at least in Barry’s Scottish accent - was not, it seems, popular.

His argument was that, to him, everyone does it. He mused perhaps his Scottish accent made his effing and jeffing stand out more or somehow seem more threatening or offensive to those wanting a profanity-free football experience.

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When the news of Mr Innes’ potential ban broke in the hours before Tuesday’s game, opinion was divided on the issue of swearing out loud.

Some people said swearing was fine. Some said swearing was acceptable only at football matches, and many others said exclaiming profanities was not acceptable anywhere - even on the now-seated terraces of the South Stand at Ashton Gate.

There are more women and children in that area that objected to Mr Innes, and more women and children at football altogether. This is, undoubtedly, a good thing, for a huge variety of reasons.

One of the side effects of the welcome diluting the very adult male environment of the football match appears to have been a lessening of tolerance to the shouted swear word.

People like my sister were early pioneers of women on the terraces - she and her friend were the only two females out of around 1,000 on the official England fans trip to West Germany for Euro 88.

Back then and for a long time, women at football would have simply begrudgingly tolerated the bad language around them unless, of course, they didn't care, and joined in.

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Bristol City fan Barry Innes from Southmead has received a letter from the club threatening to revoke his season ticket if he carries on swearing during matches (Image: BristolLive)

But now, with more families at matches, is tolerance of swearing diminishing?

I recently took a mate of mine and his seven-year-old daughter to Ashton Gate. It was her first time at a football match, and I spent most of the match mischievously wondering when she might turn to us and say: ‘Daddy, what does w***er mean?’

So I understand why swearing is increasingly an issue at football.

But it is interesting that, while it appears football matches are becoming less sweary, society is becoming more.

When Mr Innes’ email complaining of his treatment arrived in the Bristol Live newsroom it sparked a debate among us, which widened from the football to society as a whole.

The older among us tended to have a less tolerant view of swearing, or indeed noted a perception that people used to swear in public less often in years gone by, than they do now.

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‘Mild’ swear words have become more acceptable'

That could, of course, be the perception stoked by the grumpiness of age, but it is undoubtedly the case that ‘mild’ swear words have become more acceptable, and ‘strong’ swear words too.

How do we know this?

Just watch television.

Back in September 2016, Ofcom published new guidelines - revised for the first time in years - which listed profanities which were not acceptable, or needed consideration, if they were to be broadcast before the watershed. (Warning, the video below contains ALL the swear words, and some you've never heard before)

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Ofcom issued a fairly complicated list giving different levels of gravity to different words - some must never be used, some were fine, some were on various levels in between.

But what it showed is many, many words have passed from unacceptable to common usage. Our collective dictionary of acceptable words has widened.

We can all think of mild swear words you’d never hear on prime time soap operas 20 years ago which you do now. We can all think of strong swear words you’d rarely hear even after 9pm that you do now.

Television mirrors society and society is influenced by television - and while this is anecdotal of course, you’d be hard-pushed to find someone who thought younger people swear less in public than generations of young people that have gone before them.

It has now reached the point where, when a young person said to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: "You just can't be f***ing around on stage" during their visit to the Old Vic in Bristol last month, it was newsworthy for sure, but it didn't spark the kind of huge outrage it would surely have done a generation ago.

In 2019, saying 'f***ing around' to royalty is just a bit cheeky, and somehow more relaxed and 'real', than the cause of a national scandal.

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Women 'used to' hearing the c-word

Women in their 20s in this office said they are used to hearing the c-word among their peers - something that would’ve been unusual and fairly shocking a generation or two ago.

My own two daughters got to about 17 and then one day decided they weren’t going to mind their Ps and Qs in the presence of their parents, and started using swear words when talking normally around the house.

It was clear that, even though I had at least tried to maintain a swear-free environment for their upbringing, I’d failed. Television, the Internet and the classroom had seen to that. They knew swear words I had never heard before.

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It was a shock. It remained a shock for about a week, and then I got used to it. It has, perhaps, helped that sometimes awkward transition from a parent-child relationship to a parent-adult offspring relationship, now that we can all feel free in our house to exclaim ‘no f***ing way’ at the latest shock twist on Love Island or the News at Ten.

So perhaps it’s not the words themselves but how we use them.

Woman swearing

While society may well have lessened its Hyacinth Bucket-like hold on swearing in public, new laws have come in which outlaw something loosely described as ‘hate crime’.

Calling someone the ‘c-word’ to their face is probably now more illegal than it used to be, but using it in the flow of regular conversation - i.e. not directed at anyone in particular in a hateful way - appears to be increasingly fine in many circles.

But at the same time, more hateful or misogynistic words like, for instance, b**ch, have gone the other way - especially when used against someone, rather than as a verb in a regular sentence.

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Is this a good thing?

Or is this symptomatic of a wider decline in the nation’s standards?

That trope - that a new potty-mouthed generation was a symptom of a wider degeneration in our moral fibre - was certainly something I constantly heard as a child watching a very similar debate unfold every time Mary Whitehouse appeared on my tiny TV screen.

It is, I guess, all about the context. It’s all about the people you’re speaking to. It’s all about having an awareness of where you are and who can hear you.

Perhaps an increase in people hearing foul language they don’t like isn’t to do with the language itself, but more to do with the fact people don’t seem to care about other people so much - or at least enough to look around in a public space and think about whether they need to moderate their behaviour to fit.

No one, it seems, gives a sh*t any more.

Is this a bad thing?

Research has shown two fairly interesting things about swearing. The first is that people who have use fruity language tend to have a much wider general vocabulary - which aren’t swear words.

And the second is swearing is actually very healthy.

Research has been done to prove letting out expletives relieves stress and can be a form of pain relief - something illustrated in this wonderful clip of Brian Blessed and Stephen Fry dunking their arms in icy water.

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Taken out of the context of where they are used in a hateful way, swear words end up just being normal words in our everyday conversations.

Taken out of even that context, they end up being hilarious. I defy anyone not to watch Blessed bellowing here and not laugh.

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Social media might be full of bad language, but it's just another medium people express themselves. People who swear all over Facebook are the kind of people who would swear on a bus.

But social media has also created an explosion in creative profanity. The woman down the pub who comes up with a term like 'cockwomble', for instance, can now say it on Twitter and it spreads around the English-speaking world.

Bananarama in the 1980s

So swearing can be glorious. Creative. Hilarious - something I discovered when I tried to read out the Channel 4 list back in 2016, to a workplace full of schoolkid-style giggling colleagues. All very childish, yes, but there you go.